The United Church of Christ has joined a lawsuit in North Carolina claiming its religious freedom is being infringed by a law and the state constitution, which define marriage as one between a man and a woman.

North Carolina criminalizes the act of marrying someone without a valid license — and since no license will be issued to same-gender couples, multiple-partners, or anyone else who isn’t one man and one woman, clergy who performed services for such “marriages” could theoretically be subject to criminal penalties. Since the UCC wants to perform homosexual weddings, they assert their religious exercise is being restricted:

Attorney Jake Sussman, who is representing the plaintiffs, says this is the only existing marriage equality case to make a First Amendment claim. It’s also the first case for marriage Read more

[The Baptist Men] call themselves the “disaster junkies”, assisting the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross by setting up mobile hospitals, showers, laundry services, child care facilities, and cooking stations that are capable of feeding 50,000 or more people a day.

For the National Guard’s Operation Panther exercise, the group was washing the troops’ laundry, as many as 120 loads per day. The group is composed largely of retired military, and they even structure themselves like a military unit: Read more

Some may have assumed that with a Democratic President (and the stereotype that the US military leans Republican/conservative), most of those testing the limits of permissible political activities or commentary would be “right wing” or conservatives.